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23. K-Swiss Classic

Year Released: 1966

Listen up, money. Or should I say honey. K-Swiss blew the fuck up in 1984. I don't even know if they made more than one shoe, and I don't even know what that one shoe was called. It's called the Classic now, but it probably wasn't then. It was the K-Swiss to me. The K-Swiss was very clean, but it had a couple of really interesting features. Five stripes, obviously, and it also had D-rings. The most interesting feature was the toedown. It looked like a sixth stripe, but it was really an underlay, which is unusual. I think that this shoe was received differently depending on region. In Philly, the K-Swiss was a girl shoe. I knew a grip of girls who wore these with some baggy E.G . Smith socks and the white-royal Bennetton rugby. That was a status uniform in 1984. The socks alone were $10-12, which is like $22 today. In New York, somehow this was a guy shoe too. I almost fell for a patent leather version one time, but I came to my senses. If I came up on an old pair of the patents tomorrow though, I would wear them.